


It's a Christmas Miracle

by sandwich_armada



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Gen, Pub Quiz, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 14:19:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2853911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandwich_armada/pseuds/sandwich_armada
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Second Annual Inter-departmental Christmas Pub Quiz is well underway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's a Christmas Miracle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Supertights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supertights/gifts).



> Supertights, you were meant to be my Yuletide recipient. Unfortunately I was an idiot and, despite being brand new to writing for the challenge, ended up not reading the rules thoroughly enough, missing the posting deadline and accidentally defaulting. Mea maxima culpa, my friend. Hopefully this ficlet will still serve as a cute, seasonally-appropriate gift, even though it's not coming through the challenge (and is ever-so-slightly late to boot). 
> 
> For reference, in case of non-Englishness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pub_quiz
> 
> This is unbeta'd and quite silly, just like most things at Christmas. Hope you enjoy!

'Right,' I said, setting my precarious handful of drinks down as carefully as possible. There had nearly been a crying-over-spilled-alcohol incident coming around the corner from the bar - a poorly-timed moment of gesticulation from a particularly drunken punter in a truly hideous Christmas jumper - but never let it be said that Peter Grant can't handle carrying a round back to the table.

'How long do we have until the second half starts?' I asked, starting to pass out the bevvies.

'Two minutes, if the quizmaster doesn't let the break run over,' said Lesley, accepting her pint of bitter shandy (served with a straw, for ease of drinking while wearing her mask). She passed Doctor Walid his soda and lime, which he accepted without taking his eyes off the puzzle round printout sheet.

I passed Nightingale his glass of rioja and sat back to take a sip of my overpriced lager. Of all the pubs to choose as a venue for the Second Annual Inter-departmental Christmas Pub Quiz, I couldn't see why the powers-that-be in the Met's party planning squad had picked somewhere so bloody expensive.

As removed from normal Christmas office party season as we are at the Folly, we hadn't even known there was a First Annual Christmas Pub Quiz until almost a year later. We none of us had meant to have anything to do with it, if I'm honest - and probably wouldn't've done, if it hadn't been for Dr Walid. He had come storming and fuming (pretty damned uncharacteristically) into a meeting with me and Nightingale just a few weeks ago, insisting that we had to pull ourselves together into a winning pub quiz team. He wouldn't tell us exactly what had lit the fire of competition under his otherwise calm, collected bottom, but as we'd sat down at the start of the quiz earlier, DC Sahra Guleed had caught the good doctor's eye from her team's table across the room, smirked, and mouthed 'you are _going_ _down_ ', so I certainly had my suspicions.

Nightingale took a sip of his wine - sighing in disappointment at its less-than-superior quality - and glanced over our half-completed answer sheet. Frankly, our little last-minute quiz team (or, as we'd named ourselves in keeping with the Christmas theme, 'The Folly and The Ivy") didn't seem to be doing too badly here. Doctor Walid and I had covered the sports round between the two of us, Lesley'd absolutely smashed the Dingbats and Nightingale had pulled out his own fountain pen and breezed through the anagram round. We were feeling pretty strong on our TV and Movies answers (cop movie themed, of course), and we'd left most of the science general knowledge questions to our resident genius doctor. Coming up we only had a history round (which, given Nightingale had lived through most of it, should be a snap), some picture identification, music and entertainment, and a batch of silly Christmas questions to round out the quiz, I was starting to feel tentatively hopeful that we wouldn't make too embarrassing a showing.

DC Guleed was looking terrifically smug as she drank her peppermint tea across the room, though, so I knew Doctor Walid wasn't going to let us get complacent. I nudged our team's communal Terry's chocolate orange toward him as he continued to study ahead for the picture ID round, and he reached over, took a segment, and ate it without taking his eyes off the paper.

'Alright, ladies and gents,' said the quizmaster over the tinny PA, 'Are our drinks refreshed? Are we sitting comfortably?' He paused for a slight glare at a couple of DCs slinking back in from having a fag out back, radiating disapproval in a way only a trained officer of the law can do. 'Right, then let's begin part two!'

Across the table from me, Dr Walid rolled his shoulders back in a gesture not entirely unlike a boxer entering the ring. Lesley, sitting next to him, glanced sidelong at him in less-than-subtle concern.

The ensuing history round was, as expected, handled readily by Nightingale - between his unnaturally elongated lifespan and his proper posh public school education, names and dates and facts were never exactly going to be a problem. It can be tough to tell with him, but I suspect he was even enjoying himself. I caught a distinct hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth as he scribbled down the date and circumstances of the introduction of the Christmas tree to England. Which, I now know from reading over his shoulder, was in 1841 thanks to Prince Albert bringing the tradition over with him from Germany.

The history questions over and done with, it was time for the section I was probably the most nervous about - music and entertainment. As much as I know about obscure jazz (thanks, Dad), and as rhapsodical Nightingale can wax about Schubert lieder of an evening, I didn't think any of our team were particularly well-versed in the sort of cheezy Christmas pop music which I was reasonably sure would constitute this round. This could make or break our chances - and, by extension, Dr Walid's spirit.

Question one was a gimme for Lesley and I - Bill Nighy sang Christmas Is All Around, obviously (though I'll deny ever having watched Love Actually to my dying day, and I've sworn Lesley to secrecy on the matter). Question two's answer was apparently an obscure Police b-side title (someone was clearly feeling clever, considering the Met demographic of the quiz participants), which Doc Walid was only too willing to jump in and decisively answer. There were a few bits of trivia about various carols - what wassailing is, who Good King Wenceslas was, that sort of thing - and some Christmas number one clips were blasted at us over the PA, but then. Then, the bonus question happened.

'And for a final, bonus point,' the quizmaster called out, sweating visibly in his lurid christmas tree-adorned jumper, 'The top trending topic in the UK for three days this past week was in honour of the Christmas eve birthday of a famous boyband member. For one point each, name me the boyband, the member in question, and the hashtag.'

We're sunk, I thought to myself, catching Lesley's nonplussed shrug and Dr Walid's look of mounting horror.

In fact, I was looking so closely at Lesley and the good doctor, I almost missed Nightingale picking up his pen and calmly starting to write something down on the answer sheet. Almost, but not quite.

Nightingale filled all three bonus boxes on the answer sheet with his flowing script, and by the time he finished writing _One Direction,_ _Louis Tomlinson,_ _#Happy23rdBirthdayLouis_ , set his pen down, and picked up his glass of wine, all three of the rest of us were openly staring at him.

'What?' he said, drinking his wine as though nothing extraordinary or totally fucking earth-shattering had just happened.

I tried to find words strong enough to convey the number of things I was feeling in that moment, but completely failed. Luckily, Lesley found her voice.

'Um, did you just write down a guess about a boyband? About a _Twitter hashtag_?' she said, incredulous.

'Of course not,' Nightingale said, 'It's not a guess. I read about it in the Evening Standard, actually, while I was looking for evidence yesterday evening regarding an unrelated case.'

'And what, you just happened to remember it?' asked Doctor Walid, clearly struggling to fit this information into his understanding of how the world worked.'

'Well, yes,' Nightingale said, sounding a trifle put-out at our obvious bafflement. 'I was skimming through, only to come across this story about a group of young singers who appear, as far as I understand this... Twitter thing, to be able to command a massive following of fans to repeat a phrase to themselves, all over the world, for several days in a row.' He took another sip of his wine. 'With that sort of power at their command, I merely thought it might be worth investigating whether or not one, or all, of these young men were... well, wizards.'

  


I very nearly fell off my chair laughing, but in all fairness, we did end up winning that quiz.

**Author's Note:**

> Characters are all borrowed from Ben Aaronovitch or reality. No wizards, police officers, or boyband members were harmed in the making of this fiction. 
> 
> I don't actually believe any of One Direction are wizards, though Zayn's face is pretty magical.


End file.
